Read the sanitized version of Tom Sawyer. He no longer gets in a fight with the new kid in town...that would be promoting violence. Instead, they have a heart to heart talk that results in them seeing past their mutual differences and joining forces to help resolve disputes between all small boys everywhere peacefully.

The sexist parts are removed. Tom no longer comes to the rescue of Becky Thatcher and saves her from a caning, because that would be disempowering her as a strong female in control of her own destiny. The teacher who canes her then gets arrested for assault on a child, and is committed to a criminal psychiatric facility. He emerges some years later, having repented fullsomely, and founds an institute for non-violence.

Tom no longer feeds "painkiller" to the cat. That would be cruelty toward animals. The scene is removed. Tom's pal no longer pesters the pinch bug, and Tom no longer pesters the pinch bug either. They rescue it from drowing in a puddle and then release it.

The murderous Injun Joe is deemed a stereotype deeply offensive to all Native Americans. He gets re-written as a saintly Native American mystic with special healing abilities. He cures his drunken pal of alcoholism with herbal remedies, and assists the young doctor in overcoming his compulsion to rob graves by taking him on a vision quest. No one gets murdered.

No references are made to slaves or "n-ggers" anywhere! We can't have people knowing that such things were once considered part of the status quo, can we? Slavery might break out again all over if people knew about it, after all...

The new, improved version of Tom Sawyer is a story for our times. It's totally lacking in dramatic effect, boring to read, historically all wrong, completely inoffensive to idiots with a chip on their shoulders, and about as much fun to read as chewing on an old shoe!

It will shortly be inflicted on a generation of unfortunate school children, hunkered down in their Neo-Orwellian classrooms, who will decide Mark Twain was one hell of a bad writer...and they'll never read another Mark Twain story again if they can possibly avoid it. ;-P

You see, the new fascists are so intent upon establishing much more subtle forms of slavery via mind-control and enforced conformity, that they must ensure that the more obvious types of historical slavery aren't even spoken of, except in a context that will push people's emotional buttons in the desired direction...that which supports a climate of fear.

A climate of fear enables the establishment of harsher laws, more restrictions on freedom, more dictatorship in the name of "collective security".

The mindset of these atavistic hump-heads is along the lines of "Please don't draw us any pictures of human nature, or human history, or human hopes for the future, or human love. Our philosophy takes care of all that and we don't want to know any more."

God had better, 'cause I won't. Not if they're Charles Lamb, or Bowdler, or whomever.

The first time I read Huck Finn the part about the King and Duke stealing the inheritance and some other parts were left out -- I never read them until college. But! Jim was refered to as in Twain's original, Injun Joe was Injun Joe, the description of the attack planned on the Widow Douglas was left in, the eventual end of the King and Duke was left in...why the parts that were left out were censored I have no idea. And Huck's "Well, then, I'll go to Hell!" still resonants from that first, censored, edition.

No, it's what happens when I put a resonator mute in the bell of my trumpet and blow G# above high C. I don't do that very often, because the last time I did it three buzzards fell stunned off a gut wagon and all the voles in six counties moved to Wyoming.

Sorry I wasn't here earlier to help, Rap. I was running to the drug store for my THIRD batch of antibiotics. Last one wasn't working. This will finally knock out the sinus infection, I hope. I've had a low-grade sinus headache for about a month. I'm tired of it.

So far that isn't one of my complaints. I did get my wrists yanked on a bit when the dogs scared up a rabbit in our evening walk. I had them under pretty good control, but they put me to the test. (I walk with the dogs on either side of me, the way Cesar Millan says to walk the dogs, and it works well. They didn't bat an eye at the boxer who barked up a storm as we walked past his yard. I finally crossed the street for distance because I didn't want to incite him to jump his own fence. That's what my dog used to do.)

Aw, that's too easy! Go around and retrace your steps, and do everything you did with your left hand with your right hand. When your right hand feels the way your left hand does, you'll be able to triangulate on the problem task and not do it again that same way.

you should be careful with those backhands - cheekbones could bruis your knuckles. A much better technique is the open forehand smack - and if you cup the palm you can get a really impressive noise with it as well.

Cup your palm with a forehand slap and you can concentrate the force of the blow into the trigeminal nerve, as the NKVD discovered in the 1930s. I have it on excellent authority tht it really works well.

You have your Blackwall hitch, and your Carrick bend.A Sheepshank and a Cat's-paw.The Fisherman's knot and a Rolling hitch.Slipknot, Granny knot and a Cow hitch.The Figure eight, a Timber hitch, the Turk's head and a Square knot.How about an Overhand/thumb knot, a Clove hitch and the Bowline.There's the Stevedore's knot, the Surgeon's knot, the Seizing and the Matthew Walker.The Blackwall hitch, Half hitch, The Rolling hitch, and a True-lover's knot.

You could also have a knot in a tree, a knot on your head, a Gordian Knot or care (k)not about any of this.